[Ultra-Tech] Bioplas Guns?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

You could build them like modern automobile engines are built, with a few critical parts like the barrel being made of rugged metal or ceramics surrounding by bioplas (taking the place of the aluminum engine block). Legal bioplas guns might be required to have some non-bioplas parts for safety or sensor detection. You wouldn't get quite the weight and space savings as pure bioplas, however.

Yeah, I'm thinking a metal barrel, bolt, etc will be appropriate. As I mentioned above, I believe an extendable metal barrel is doable when combined with bioplas. To be more clear, I'll try to use some ASCII art. Let's say we have a weapon that has a barrel that can be 10" (pistol), 15" (carbine), 20" (rifle), 25" (long rifle), or 30" (sniper/payload rifle). Left is how it would look from the side without the bioplas (or with clear bioplas), right is how it would from the front without the bioplas (or with clear bioplas).

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Originally Posted by Rupert

Also, it would make the TL11 Cannibal Nanokit largely redundant, and seems generally superior to Memory Metal, etc.

This would be a weapon that can be concealed, but it would still have the same mass and volume as the full weapon, whereas the cannibal nanokit is a tiny tube of paste weighing in at 1% of the mass of the item. You'll be hard pressed to smuggle a bioplas sniper rifle in an implanted Flesh Pocket (UT211), but a cannibal nanokit that lets you make a sniper rifle in short order would be perfectly doable.

As for memory metal, UT seems to lack stats for that - it's mentioned alongside bioplas on UT90 (where it's indicated to be TL 10+), but UT170-171 goes straight from smart bioplastics (bioplas, TL 9) to living metal (TL 12).

Originally Posted by Rupert

I think that gun barrels and bolt faces, etc. will need to be metals or similarly hard and dense metallic ceramics if they're to last for a few TLs yet. For ones that only need to last a short while hard plastics with ceramic barrel linings (non-metallic if it's to get through scanners) can do, though over-using such a gun might lead to finding out it's reached it's 'use by' when it catastrophically fails.

Yeah, this is my inclination, and it avoids the issue of bioplas' low density. There may be some all-bioplas guns in use, probably mostly in the form of single-shot, low recoil weapons - low-velocity grenade launchers, flare guns, etc. Criminals and the like might have all-bioplas "zip guns" or similar as well, only working for a few shots before they need to regenerate.

It also occurs to me that bioplas would be a great material for magazines - no need to worry about the spring wearing out when the magazine itself can function as a self-healing spring.